Opinions on Final Fantasy VIII

Do you think the game is as bad as so many people make it out to be? I get that story telling and characters is all subjective so feel free to have your own take on it.

Personally, VIII puts me in a very weird spot. I don't think it's as bad as everyone says, but at the same time, I can't exactly blame folks for having such a negative opinion on it.

I'll admit that drawing magic can be one of the most tedious things in any RPG period, but I never liked how the main complaint people tend to say is "Drawing is such a boring and tedious thing, and it takes so long to do" when it's completely optional.

Personally, while I dislike how the game dumps all the game mechanics just a few minutes into the game, I got to say that I do really think they are interesting ideas. I find equipping magic to stats to make the characters stronger instead of armor to be unique, and I love the GF system to death.

Back to the drawing topic. Sure, you CAN draw if you want, and that's up to you, but I still don't find it fair to bash the game for that mechanic when the GF mod abilities allow you to forge different items you win in Triple Triad (Which I love to death personally) or drops from enemies into magic so you don't have to draw. Lets be honest here, drawing 300 Death spells to fight Omega is annoying, but just using card mod or Life Mag-RF on some chef knives to get roughly 30 Death spells each is so much faster.

With that said, while I LOVE the GF system, I can't deny just how unbalanced the entire game is. Being able to get the Quistis card and then using Card Mod on it for 3 Samantha Souls, and then using Time Mag-RF on those for 180 Triples so you can have characters with almost 200 attack just before the first city in the game is just bad. Not to mention If you know what cards to get, you can get Squall's 2nd ultimate weapon before the 1st boss that's not even 10 minutes into the game, and his ultimate weapon at the end of disk 1. This in turn makes the game so boring since you can get god like stats with minimal effort within the 1st disk, and that's just not good.

When it comes to the actual battle system, I have to admit that not just because of how unbalanced the stat system is, I am disappointed to see that they managed to take the biggest flaw of Final Fantasy 7's battle system, and somehow make it worse. Because of this, battling just becomes a tiring chore to do. For those who don't know, every character was the same blank slate and besides their limit breaks, the only thing that made them unique from the others is what abilities YOU put on them. At least in 7 you could spice the characters up by giving them different magic and summons to use, but you don't even get that pleasure in 8. In 8, everyone is going to have the same magic pool, and you're never going to use any of it since it's either going to weaken your stats, or it's just not very helpful because magic is weak as hell in 8. So because of this, the only magic you'll use are buffs, but never offensively. This means all you'll be doing is mashing the attack command until the cows come home, and it gets boring. It doesn't help when you get the Aura spell and use that on Squall so he can spam his limit break to kill even bosses in 1 round.

As a nice detour from limit breaks, lets talk about upgrading weapons. Normally you'd simply buy the weapons at a shop, but here, you have to use items you win from drops or cards to craft the weapons. On top of that, unless you know before hand on what exactly makes what weapon, you wont know what you're going to need unless you find special magazines that tell you what materials make what weapon, and then you have to figure out on your own just where to get the materials. But hey, at least you get an awesome weapon for your troubles right? Wrong! In 8, the jump in stats a player gets from their weakest weapon to their ultimate is roughly 20 points in attack which is nothing. Not only that, but as stated earlier, there are so many ways to get a 150 jump at minimum with little to no effort. At least Squall unlocks more limit breaks as he upgrades his weapons, but besides that, there's no point in wasting your time.

I could go more into detail on things like how having 100 Drains on St Atk-J will always refill your health equal to the amount of damage you inflict which is roughly 3000 damage at minimum thus removing all challenge from the game, or how the world map is completely lifeless and boring, but this is going on too long. This is just a rant about the game that I felt like saying and would like to hear your opinions on it.